


Four shall ride

by PigeonMailDandelionMerchant



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adam is gonna save the whales, Conservation, Direct Action, Frogs, Gen, Growing Up, I mean if you think about it political protesting is just complaining with an agenda, Not betaed we die like men, and fuck up capitalists as he goes, black and white morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 11:18:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19945306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PigeonMailDandelionMerchant/pseuds/PigeonMailDandelionMerchant
Summary: Listen, you can take the celestial weapons from the kid. But you can't take the fire. Don't try. They'll go for you knee-caps.This is really more meta musings than anything else.  I read one (1) passage from the book of revelations and this happened.





	Four shall ride

Pepper is different these days.  
She’s been raised under careful tutelage. (Her mother gave up the commune, not her ideals.) so Pepper has always had a keen sense of injustice. Always been the first to lash out after being slighted. Its always been personal to her, how the world works against her. 

Now though, she goes looking for fights. She hunts them down.  
Books and dictionaries, stacks of papers. Print outs of laws and reports. Pepper learns to read and highlight and rend apart words from a witch with a doctorate. And oh, isn’t the fury of someone who believes in peace terrifying to behold?

R.P. Tyler, mighty and lonely chairman of the Lower Tadfield Residents Association is bemused to find himself with a student. Pepper, determined and outspoken all of 11 insisting to be taught how to complain. He’s nervous but agrees- everyone wants to feel appreciated for their skills.

“Be direct, call them by name first. Don’t let them hide in anonymity.” He says about addressing letters.  
“Tell them succinctly why you’re concerned- then explain why they should care. Make it personal if you must. The future of our community depends on their actions. Make that clear.” He lectures about formatting.  
“Often the best course of action is to physically be there and force them to look you in the face.” He points out, with a vague premonition of of the power he is about to unleash.

He is not sure of her opinions, but he admires her vision. 12, 13, 14, 15 the years go by, her complaints advocacy (lets call it what it is) are addressed to higher and higher authorities.

Pepper was born to brawl. She excels in full contact sports. In baring her teeth and stepping forward first. Phone canvassing, researching, lobbying, and marching in the streets are not natural to her. They’re exhausting and frustrating and sometimes she just wants to go home and complain to her friends and just- exist in comfortable safe Tadfield.

But, here’s the thing:  
Once you’ve held a heavenly blade, even a twig one. You can never really forget how. And Wars can be waged very differently these days.

*

Brian is a very linear thinker. You wouldn’t think it to look at him. Messy, Boyish, Sloppily dressed. As he ages he puts on comfortable padding over football players muscles. He is uniquivicably shaped like friend. He is not the Logical One.

But Brian is direct. The kind of boy who goes walking in the woods, hoping to find a good mud pit and finds a stream. 

Most likely he will splash around in that stream. He’ll be sure to look for frogs and little fish. There probably won’t be any. 

But there will be an oil slick, maybe plastic bags tangled in the weeds.

Brian is such a direct young man, not terribly concerned with going home in time for dinner. He will follow these things to their source.

And then, because he’s actually quite single minded. HE will tell everyone he meets, in his innocently tactless way, where the pollutions come from and why there are no more frogs.

Then should he visit the stream again (He will) and should it still be a mess. Brian will go and fix things himself. Brian rather likes getting his hands dirty. And he has always been good at making an almighty mess.

Pollution is a game that affects everyone, so Brian figures everyone should get to play.

*

Wenslydale looks 10 years away from accountancy. Anyone who meets him would swear up and down that its preordained at this point. He’s even got the skill with numbers. He doesn’t fight his fate.

At 11 Wenslydale starts to teach himself global economics. He is often to be found with a graph paper notebook, a calculator and two highlighters. The economic scales of a modern age. He begins to take things into account.  
Price of water rights from this well to number of Nestle bottles on a shelf. How many jobs does this make? How many deaths in between?

Wenslydale, hes actually quite creative, very fluid in his ability to track this alchemy. Money to water to desertification and dehydration and back to money again. He can tell you the equations that turn hunger into gold. And tell you he does.  
See, he’s weighed the gold too and found it lacking. 

Wensleydale is 22 when he gets his first death threat.

“Youngster, is this really worth it?” His parents say as he comes home from work with a box- it holds the contents of his desk.

“Youngster, we’re scared for you.” They say the first time he finds a bullet in his mailbox.

He works for a non profit. He works on commission. He eats Ramen on a bare wooden floor as he makes numbers dance.

He has always been to old for his age. He has always been to thin for comfort. But now he looks even thinner, even older. Or Maybe its size of the ledgers he holds. 

*

Adam’s summer has ended. It’s hardly fare, he’s a child still. But then, what is fare really?  
His bookshelves fill up, misprint bible’s borrowed from an angel lean against the Quoran lean against the new aquarian. All dwarfed by stacks and stacks of models and books of science. Science fiction and fantasy take places of honor by his bed. All of this nurtures rock hard certainly and faith in humans and earth first an always.

But this is not about Adam’s faith, this is about his actions. And he can take a lot more action than most humans. Except possibly the very rich. Money and Magic are actually remarkably similar in this day and age. Both can make problems go away.

For fear of authoritarianism and godhood he will not rewrite the world. And he will not change humanity.  
But.  
He lets himself walk in the woods, toads and frogs raining from his hands. (his father would surely approve) He can hold wild fires in his palms, controlling their burn, helping seeds germinate holding them back from homes as much as he can. Bless animals as they cross the road. He can help trees spread and survive. Adam cannot replant eden, cannot stop humans  
From destroying it. But he helps what’s there survive.

His breath rattles in the earths bones.

*

Look, do you see them ride?

Are you paying enough attention to see grey eyed death, who travels with the storms of change biting his heals? He’s in your shadow you know. 

Are you listening hard enough to find the sword? Blades aren’t always literal, sometimes they cross and decide results before the war can ever start

Can you think big enough to find Famine? Actions tangle into results, the strings are so often yanked from outside the frame. 

Are you patient enough to spot Plagu- Pestil- Pollution creeping where he should not? Sometimes the best way to find him is to ask why? Pollution has never bothered to ask why not.

Four horsemen were given power over humanity. And four shall ride.


End file.
